Abstracts: Flying insects, particularly bees, transfer pollen to flowers to facilitate plant reproduction. The Western or European honeybee (Apis mellifera) may get the most attention because of the honey they produce, but other bees pollinate vegetables, berries, and other fruits on which we all depend. Adding the natural history of bees to the agricultural history of food production underscores the fragile relationships between pollinator, plants, and humans.

Flying insects, particularly bees, transfer
pollen to flowers to facilitate plant reproduction. The Western or European
honeybee (Apis mellifera), native to
Europe, Asia, and parts of Africa, often receives the most attention because
of the honey that results from their pollen-storage system. Yet other bees bear
the burden of pollinating vegetables, berries, and other fruits on which we all
depend.

Plants and insects developed mutually beneficial relationships over millions of years. The plants depended on insects to reproduce through the transfer of pollen from pollen grain to flower stigma, as the insects ate the plants’ pollen and nectar. Bees, a flying insect, became distinct by gathering and storing pollen to feed themselves and their young. DNA research confirms that bees coexisted with flowering plants from the beginning of flowering plants 130 million years ago. Archaeologists find evidence of bees in fossilized resin (amber).

All bee species (about 20,000) evolved along with plants in localized biospheres, but only those classified in the genus Apis are technically honeybees. Millenia before humans moved Apis mellifera around the globe, squash bees, bumble bees, and solitary bees, among many others, pollinated crops, including crops native to the Americas, i.e., squash, pumpkins, cranberries, tomatoes, avocados, and potatoes, to name a few. Native bees pollinate plants in their ecosystem more efficiently than does the popular Apis mellifera. In fact, the imported European or Western honeybee completes with the native species for pollen, and humans give Apis mellifera an advantage through special treatment to ensure honey production. This puts other bees more proficient in plant pollination at a disadvantage.

Stereograph of an apiary at Shaker Village in Canterbury, New Hampshire, circa 1875, with elder Henry Clay Blinn holding a frame. The individual beehives appear to be made of stackable boxes with removable frames in the style patented by Lorenzo L. Langstroth in 1852. From the Collections of The Henry Ford.

Do museums interpret the complexity of human intervention in the natural process of pollination?

Often interpretation focuses on honeybees, and
the artifacts of the beekeeper who worked with them. In North America,
colonists imported Avis mellifera to ensure access to honey and to
sustain crops imported with the bees. When honeybees swarmed into hollow trees,
the beekeepers sometimes cut out the tree and moved the pollinators closer to
their gardens, orchards, and clover fields and moved the honey source closer to
their kitchen table.

Humans intervened further in the lives of pollinators by designing different types of homes for bees. The most lasting example of innovation resulted from close and persistent observation of bee behavior. Lorenzo L. Langstroth’s 1852 U.S. Patent for an improved method of constructing beehives revolutionized beekeeping at the time. Langstroth established the concept others have called “bee space” and his basic removable-frame-in-hive design remains an industry standard.

At least one patent holder took inspiration from
bees’ natural homes, but only the form, not the function. An 1869 U.S. Patent confirms
that tree-hives captured the imagination of Charles E. Spaulding. He explained
that his “honey-boxes of a round form…conform more nearly to the natural
depositories of the wild bee” and that they “correspond to hollow limbs, which
are sought out by the bees in their natural or wild state.” Spaulding, a
cheese-box maker in Theresa, New York, thought in the round anyway (the common
form of cheese boxes), but his improved hive suited human need more than that
of bees. Security features to reduce the likelihood of theft and exterior artwork
advertised his product while appealing to consumers. Bee behavior influenced
his innovation little.

C. E. Spaulding, “Bee-Hive,” U.S. Patent 89,896 (May 11, 1869, antedated April 8, 1869). The top half contained the honey-boxes, the bottom half, the hives. The top could be rotated to close the passage between hive and honey. From the Collections of The Henry Ford.

Rarely do museums address the other side of the honeybee story.

Pollinators evolved with other native vegetables
and fruits. Intimate relationships between native bees and native varieties
developed over time, and native bees do not naturally pollinate invasive
species. Neither do honeybees (technically an invasive species in parts of the
globe) pollinate native species that they did not evolve in tandem with.

In fact, honeybees undermine the natural relationship
of native species because honeybees compete for pollen to produce honey which
can undermine the work of less numerous native pollinators in their natural
habitat. Humans bear some responsibility for ensuring balance between the bees
that exist to pollinate, and those that exist to produce honey. Exploring this
reality increases opportunities for history museums to interpret the
environment, and agriculture.

In museums that do not interpret agriculture
as either their focus or as a topic relevant to their mission, staff can still
link their collections to link natural history and the history of
domestication. Specifically, advertisements or decorative arts featuring
beehives provide a hook to discuss relationships between honeybees, domestication,
natural and domesticated plant pollination, and human manipulation of the
process. Discussion of foodways in historic houses may naturally lead to the
topics of bees and pollination. Those discussions can provoke more thought by
distinguishing between food on the table, between imported plants compared to
native species, and between imported and native bees. Namely, crops such as
grain (wheat, rye, oats) and maize (corn) remained dependent on the wind to
move pollen. Humans cultivating these crops did not have to manage hives as
market gardeners and truck farmers did (and still do). These comparisons beg
for explanation of both natural history and the history of domestication.

Practice your powers of observation by
identifying the fruits in this painting by a Mexican artist, and then explore
the types of native species that cohabitated with them. Find a still life of
foods from your museum’s home (or use your own well-researched foodways program
as the basis). Then put the food on a plate in a historic house interpretation
that prompts conversations about plant propagation through the natural act of
pollination specific to your site (bee-specific about both the local and the
imports). That paints the most comprehensive picture of bees and their direct
relationships to food supplies historically and today.

In conclusion, most market-garden and
truck-farm crops (i.e., cabbage, green beans, and black-eyed peas); berries
(i.e., strawberries, blackberries, and raspberries); and orchard crops (i.e.,
apples, grapes, pears, peaches, and plums), depend on the mighty pollinator,
the native bee, to survive and thrive. Bees also pollinate crops that livestock
eat (buckwheat, clover), and crops that produce the fibers we wear (cotton and
flax). Bees also pollinate the flowers of matured plants that then yield seeds
for the next year’s crop. For these reasons, native species play a significant
role worthy of consideration to enrich conversations that the honeybee otherwise
dominates.